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Why Imperial Valley Needs a Developer Who Isn’t Afraid to Sue the Government

Developing major infrastructure in Imperial County requires a specific kind of resilience. It is not a market where you show up, file your permits, and break ground on schedule. It is a market where by-right approvals get challenged in court by neighboring jurisdictions, where utility interconnection agreements get complicated by consultant relationships, where environmental organizations make eight-figure settlement demands as the price of proceeding.

Against this landscape, the relevant question about a developer is not whether his biography is controversy-free. The relevant question is whether he has the legal sophistication, the financial resources, and the personal willingness to litigate against government overreach when the alternative is capitulation to a campaign that has no legal merit.

Sebastian Rucci’s record on that question is unusually specific. He fought the FBI over seized funds and made them give the money back with interest. He litigated the Sixth Circuit into ruling for transparency against the government’s preference for secrecy. He moved his data center project to county jurisdiction when the City of Imperial tried to block it, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit naming individual officials, and continued the project through years of coordinated opposition. These are not the actions of a developer who can be worn down by delay and defamation until he goes away.

The “Wartime Developer” Concept

Rucci has described himself as a “wartime developer” — someone who is not just capable of navigating the normal approval process, but specifically equipped to operate when that process has been weaponized against him. The framing is accurate. The IVDC approval process has been weaponized. The city filed a lawsuit that the court called legally insufficient. A city manager allegedly pressured another city to rescind a water supply agreement. Environmental organizations allegedly coordinated with city officials to manufacture CEQA exposure. A state senator introduced legislation designed to retroactively alter the legal framework the project relied on.

A developer without litigation capability, financial staying power, and personal willingness to fight would have walked away from this project a long time ago. Many would have. The economics of development include a calculation about the expected cost of fighting a sustained opposition campaign versus the expected return on completing the project. For most developers, the numbers don’t hold when the opposition is as organized and aggressive as what the IVDC has faced.

Rucci is still here. The project is still proceeding. The federal civil rights lawsuit is filed. The Superior Court ruling is on the record. The project’s legal position is stronger now than it was before the opposition’s campaign began — because the campaign’s legal theories have been tested and found insufficient, and because the federal lawsuit has put personal liability on the table for the people who organized it.

What Imperial Valley Gets From This

Imperial Valley has a history of watching large outside investment promises materialize slowly if at all, because the institutional environment makes completion difficult and developers learn that the expected return doesn’t justify the expected fight. The region needs developers who understand this environment and have the capability to navigate it — not because the obstruction is legitimate, but because it exists and will not simply stop existing because it lacks legal merit.

A developer who beat the FBI on a funds seizure, won a Sixth Circuit transparency ruling, and is currently litigating a federal civil rights case against named government officials while continuing to advance a $10 billion project is demonstrating the kind of institutional resilience that Imperial Valley’s development environment specifically requires. Whether you agree with every decision he has made in his career, that resilience is a real asset in the context of this project — and this region.

Imperial Valley deserves a developer who is fighting for it as hard as the opposition is fighting against it. On current evidence, it has one.

The Largest Private Investment in Imperial County History — And Why Some Officials Want to Stop It

There is a question that every economic development official in a chronically underinvested region eventually confronts: when the investment finally comes, will the institutions that are supposed to welcome it actually do so?

Imperial County is confronting that question right now. The Imperial Valley Data Center represents a $10 billion capital commitment to a 75-acre industrial site in one of the most economically distressed counties in California. No private entity in the county’s history has made a comparable investment commitment. Not the agricultural processors, not the energy companies, not the logistics firms that have come and gone over the decades. Ten billion dollars, on land that is zoned for exactly this use, approved through the county’s legitimate ministerial process.

And some of the region’s own officials are litigating to stop it.

Scale in Context

It is worth sitting with what $10 billion means in a county the size of Imperial. The county’s total assessed value — the cumulative value of all property, commercial and residential, within its borders — is measured in the tens of billions. A single private investment of $10 billion doesn’t just add to that base; it restructures it. The ratio of commercial to residential assessed value shifts. The county’s credit position improves. The ability to finance future infrastructure improvements — schools, roads, water systems — expands because the collateral base supporting those instruments is materially stronger.

This is before a single permanent employee is hired, before a single server is powered on, before the recurring $28.75 million in annual property tax begins flowing to county services.

What the Multiplier Looks Like on the Ground

Economic multipliers are often cited as justification for subsidizing private investment. In this case, no subsidy is being requested — the developer is paying full cost for permits, infrastructure improvements, and utility connections. The multiplier effect flows entirely to the county.

During the multi-year construction phase, 1,688 union workers drawing prevailing wages will spend money in Imperial County. They will rent housing, buy groceries, eat at restaurants, purchase work supplies, and use local services. The businesses that serve them will hire additional staff. The hotels and rental properties that house out-of-region workers will generate occupancy tax. The contractors and subcontractors who supply materials and services will place orders with local vendors wherever possible.

Economic research consistently finds that major construction projects generate two to three indirect and induced jobs for every direct construction position. Applied to 1,688 direct positions, that implies a total employment impact of four to five thousand jobs during the build phase — in a county where the working-age population is roughly 100,000 people.

The Infrastructure That Comes With It

The project includes a dedicated 330-megawatt substation — infrastructure that the developer is paying for, not the county, not IID ratepayers. The wastewater recycling upgrades the developer proposed for municipal plants in El Centro and Imperial would have improved those utilities’ infrastructure at private expense. The 862 megawatt-hour battery storage system would add grid stabilization capacity to the IID service territory, benefiting ratepayers who would otherwise pay for those stabilization services through utility rates.

These are not ancillary benefits. They are the kind of private-funded public infrastructure improvements that counties typically spend decades trying to attract through tax incentives, grant competitions, and development agreements. They are being offered as part of the standard project package — and the opposition is fighting to refuse them.

The Institutional Question

When a region consistently fails to convert economic development opportunities into actual investment, it eventually stops attracting them. Site selectors and developers maintain institutional memory. A county that fights a $10 billion by-right project through years of litigation sends a signal to the next developer evaluating a site list that includes Imperial County: find somewhere else.

The officials litigating against this project will not be held responsible for the investments that don’t come next. The residents who depend on the jobs and tax revenues those investments would have generated will bear that cost invisibly — in the school that stays underfunded, the fire station that stays understaffed, the young adult who moves away because there isn’t enough work to stay.

Imperial County has one chance to get this right. The courts have agreed the project is legal. The land has been zoned for this use for decades. The investment is ready. The decision now is whether the county’s institutions will honor the choices that brought it here.